By SUSANA HAYWARD

It's an hour later in the rest of Mexico, but it's the holy time of noon according to the Maya calendar in this traditional township. When the church bell peals thunderously 12 times, everyone stops what they are doing and makes the sign of the cross.

But once the ringing ends, the thud of hammers again echoes across the sprawling farmlands around this autonomous city, home to 100,000 Tzotzil-speaking Mayas.

San Juan Chamula, a mostly ceremonial center that long resisted outsiders, is undergoing a construction boom, thanks mostly to its youngest population that recently departed in droves to work in the United States and is sending millions of dollars home.Along with a building explosion, Chamula and other remote indigenous communities where Mayan is spoken are also experiencing a technological awakening.

Cyber cafes sprout in villages with primitive plumbing and unpaved roads. Mayas in traditional attire chat on cellular phones and send text messages to kin in the United States. Here, many now photograph and video tape their festivals and religious ceremonies, a syncretism of ancient beliefs with Catholicism. Until recently, recording such images could land one in jail.

Fourteen years after the non-Indian Subcomandante Marcos and his National Zapatista Liberation Army took up arms to demand better living conditions, autonomy, schools, clinics and access to modern media technology for the Maya, a hi-tech revolution is taking hold.

''After all, Chiapas was the site of the first internet war,'' said William ''Chip'' Morris, Jr., author of Living Maya, about the Zapatista uprising, timed to protest the Jan.1 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement signed by the United States, Canada and Mexico, which didn't provide favorable agricultural conditions to Mexican farmers.

It was Marcos who made successful use of the Internet from the Lacandon jungle to enlist tens of thousands of sympathizers from around the world to the cause. He ultimately forced then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to call a ceasefire and begin talks.

Chiapas, population 4 million, is still Mexico's poorest state despite having some of the country's richest natural resources. Its dams provide Mexico with almost half of its hydroelectric energy.

Living conditions remain dire for much of the state and political tensions still percolate between Zapatista communities and the government of President Felipe Calderón. But what the government has failed to provide, tens of thousands are finding on their own. Chamula, never a Zapatista stronghold, has found a solution across the U.S. border.

''These are George Bush's dollars,'' Juan Gallo, a former Chamula County judge and a renowned artist, chuckled as he walked around his neighborhood.

On one hand were abandoned traditional mud thatch huts. Rising in their wake are modern-day pyramids testifying to new wealth -- concrete homes, with columns, bay windows, white-picket fences, many painted in the sunny pastels favored by Floridians.

Gallo said his son Julio César, 24, went to Tampa four years ago and makes a good living in construction, living in a community with hundreds of other Chamulans.

With his son's funds, Gallo built a successful mini-tortilla factory that churns out the corn staple with the latest modern machinery. Workers use four newly-purchased motorcycles to make home deliveries.

''The kids here go the states for three or four years,'' said Gallo, 51. "It's like going to college.''

Mexican migration statistics show that up to a half million Chiapanecans, mostly indigenous peasants, are working in the United States. They labor in construction or gardening in Florida, Texas, North Carolina and California and range in age from 15 to 18. While a majority are men, young women are also joining them.

''I worked in Tampa for two years,'' said a grinning 24-year Manuel Hernández, who crossed the Arizona desert two years ago, made his way to Tampa and is now back home. ``I went to make money and learn other ways of construction. I may go back to Tampa, but now I'm too busy building homes in Chamula.''

With only an elementary school education, Hernández and an apprentice were rapidly building a two-story home with skylights, probably better suited for the tropics than the cloudy cool climate of Chamula. He had designed it for a city elder, based on building styles that resembled those of Florida or California.

''The exodus of the Chiapas population is a recent phenomenon without precedent in the modern history of our region,'' said Jorge Alberto López Arévalo, an economist with the Chiapas Autonomous University.

Arévalo has been documenting the migration of workers to the United States since the late 1990's, when it erupted, as well as the social changes it has brought. He points to NAFTA, the government war of attrition against the Zapatistas and recent natural disasters such as hurricanes Stan and Wilma, which wiped out tens of thousands of homes and farmland, for the exodus of Maya farmers.

''We're becoming importers of food and exporters of workers,'' he said.

In 2005, workers sent $655.3 million to Chiapas, jumping to $824.5 million in 2006. In 2007, they sent $796, ebbing with the U.S. mortgage crisis and increased clampdown on illegal immigration in the United States.

The Bank of Mexico estimates that U.S. workers from Chiapas now send more money home than those from traditional migrant states such as Zacatecas, Colima, Durango, San Luis Potosí and Nayarit.

Annual total remittances to Mexico from abroad are estimated at about $25 billion a year, second only to the country's oil earnings. Most of it goes toward family consumption, and only about 1.5 percent toward productive investment, the Bank of Mexico estimates.

In Chamula, a line now forms early each day at the new Western Union office that recently opened up across the market plaza, where peasants sell beans, corn, fruit and arts and crafts. Next to it, the first cyber café with 10 computers opened in April.

Until recently, Chamulans traveled south seven miles to San Cristobal de las Casas, a colonial tourism haven of 250,000, for daily errands. But now, Chamula is becoming self-sufficient and more tech savvy.

''Indigenous communities want more cell phone coverage,'' said Rafael Najera, the supervisor for the cellular telephone company Telcel in San Cristobal. "They buy a lot of prepaid cell phone cards to call the United States. We're now studying logistics to install more cell phone towers.''

Many anthropologists worry that the digital age may further endanger Maya culture, but others here say it will better enable them to record and preserve their culture.Luis Morales is an anthropologist with the new Universidad Intercultural of Chiapas, located in San Cristobal.

Currently there are 900 students enrolled at the university, paying about $60 a semester, studying everything from Mexican history, anthropology, political science and communications for undergraduate and post graduate degrees.

Gallo, the Chamulan artist, recently inaugurated a mural for the university auditorium.It shows the evolution of the Maya with familiar depictions of farmers, festivals, the Virgin of Guadalupe. And it continues to modern times, with scenes of tourists taking photos, a Maya woman writing on a computer, modern dancing and even the now accepted spectacle of public kissing.

Its final scene is of Mayas climbing stairs made of books.

''Their traditions come from the 16th century,'' said Morales.

''With globalization, the changes are accelerated, but Maya culture doesn't allow outside imposition,'' he said. "Instead, they adopt aspects of Western life, what they like. But they maintain their tight community organizations without changing their profound cultural, religious base.''